Organizational development and change in Africa(1)

Little is known about organizational functioning and managerial behavior in Africa. The need for organizational development and change is urgent. Current attempts to reform African public sector organizations tend to focus on mechanistic measures, neglecting the complexity of organizational life. Western approaches to organizational development tend to reflect their cultural milieu and may contain elements which are irrelevant or inimical to African contexts. There is a need to develop concepts and approaches to organizational development and change which are effective and sensitive to African contexts.

Most African nations have been independent for less than four decades. Immense changes have taken place on the African continent during that time. ‘Development’ remains the most common word in the rubric of Africa. Many governments still claim to be ’revolutionary,’ although change since independence has generally not been radical. ’Change’ in education has meant more schools, more teachers, more colleges, more universities: more and more of the Western assumption that education and learning inevitably means schooling. ’Change’ in health provision has meant more hospitals, more imported drugs, more complex procedures, more university trained medical practitioners: more and more of the health arrangements which the rich countries of the West can afford less and less. ’Change’ in organizational arrangements has meant more -- and bigger -- bureaucracies, more ministries, more departments, more parastatal corporations, more bureaucrats, more procedures, more forms, more control mechanisms: more and more of the organizational structures and practices which are now seen to retard change and development.     

Lost in Translation: A Multi‐Level Case Study of the Metamorphosis of Meanings and Action in Public Sector Organizational Innovation

This paper explores the early implementation of an organizational innovation in the UK National Health Service (NHS) – Treatment Centres (TCs) – designed to dramatically reduce waiting lists for elective care. The paper draws on case studies of 8 TCs (each at varying stages of their development) and aims to explore how meanings about TCs are created and evolve, and how these meanings impact upon the development of the organizational innovation. Research on organizational meanings needs to take greater account of the fact that modern organizations like the NHS are complex multi‐level phenomena, comprising layers of interlacing networks. To understand the pace, direction and impact of organizational innovation and change we need to study the interconnections between meanings across different organizational levels. The data presented in this paper show how the apparently simple, relatively unformed, concept of a TC framed by central government is translated and transmuted by subsequent layers in the health service administration, and by players in local health economies, and, ultimately, in the TCs themselves, picking up new rationales, meanings and significance as it goes along. The developmental histories of TCs reveal a range of significant re‐workings of macro policy with the result that there is considerable diversity and variation between local TC schemes. The picture is of important disconnections between meanings, that in many ways mirror Weick's (1976) ’loosely coupled systems’. The emergent meanings and the direction of micro‐level development of TCs appear more strongly determined by interactions within the local TC environment, notably between what we identify as groups of ’idealists’, ’pragmatists’, ’opportunists’ and ’sceptics’ than by the framing (Goffman 1974) provided by macro and meso organizational levels. While this illustrates the limitations of top down and policy‐driven attempts at change, and highlights the crucial importance of the front‐line local ’micro‐systems’ (Donaldson and Mohr 2000) in the overall scheme of implementing organizational innovations, the space or headroom provided by frames at the macro and meso levels can enable local change, albeit at variable speed and with uncertain outcomes.     

Stepping Out: Rhetorical Devices and Culture Change Management in the UK Civil Service

Organizational culture is the pattern of values and beliefs held by members of an organization and the management of culture is now one of the most frequently discussed of all organizational concepts. The excitement associated with culture is attributable to two factors. First, it is argued that culture is the key to organizational performance; simply stated, a strong organizational culture can be a source of competitive advantage. Second, culture is perceived as an alternative method of control to traditional and technocratic forms of management and can be manipulated to ensure that employees are enthusiastic and committed to organizational objectives.
Despite the extensive interest in this topic, culture remains an elusive concept. This paper investigates the nature of culture and considers strategies for introducing cultural change. Specifically, the aims of the paper are threefold. First, to locate and explain the interests and significance of culture change for the public sector. Second, using a case study of a newly created agency, to investigate the problems and issues affecting cultural change in the civil service. Third, to reassess and critically evaluate the claims for culture management made in the literature. Finally, this paper questions some of the assumptions in the literature, which with few exceptions are biased toward top management and the unitary conception of organization, an ideological frame of reference which is particularly problematic in the public sector.     

Assessing Public Managers' Change-Oriented Behavior: Are Private Managers Caught in the Doldrums?

This article presents a concept and a measurement of managers' change-oriented behavior related to the initiation and implementation organizational change. It is argued that managers have an optimal potential for achieving organizational changes if they have the change-centered leadership style, are intuitive, recognize demands for change, and have power-motivated behavior. Public and private managers are significantly different in relation to change-oriented behavior based on data from 343 managers in two public organizations and one private. One result was unexpected: public managers are more change-oriented than managers in business organizations. As expected, there is no significant difference in change-oriented behavior among managers in public agencies. Possible explanations for these outcomes are presented.     

Something Funny Happened on the Way to Reform Success: The Case of Budget Reform Implementation in Ghana

Abstract

The current article discusses experience with budgeting and financial management reforms in Ghana and is particularly focused on the development of the Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) between 1998 and 2002. Evidence shows that this reform began well but faltered after an initial period of progress. A number of factors are referenced in trying to explain why reform implementation was derailed, including reform ownership and political will, organizational integration and organizational incentives, and strategic capacity. All of these factors are commonly presented as influences on reform implementation. The Ghanaian experience provides detail as to how such influences could work.     

From domestic to international: the politics of ethnic identity in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia

This paper examines two contrasting cases of ethnic-group political activism in China – the Uighurs in Xinjiang and the Mongols in Inner Mongolia – to explain the former's political activism and the latter's lack thereof. Given similar challenges and pressures, how can we explain the divergent patterns in these two groups' political behavior? This paper forwards the argument that domestic factors alone are not sufficient to account for differences in the groups' political behavior. Instead, international factors have to be included to offer a fuller and satisfactory explanation. The paper illustrates how three types of international factors – big power support, external cultural ties, and Uighur diaspora community activism – have provided opportunities and resources to make the Uighur political activism sustainable. In Inner Mongolia, its quest for self-determination reached the highest fervor in the early half of the twentieth century, particularly with the support of imperial Japan. However, since the end of WWII, Inner Mongolia has not received any consistent international support and, as a result, has been more substantially incorporated into China's geopolitical body.     

The 'Publicness' of Public Organizations

This article analyses the diversity of public organizations focusing on variations in their degree of publicness. We define 'publicness' as organizational attachment to public sector values: for example, due process, accountability, and welfare provision. Based on a survey of Danish public organizations, we show that organizations with a high degree of publicness differ from organizations with a low degree of publicness. The former are characterized by complex tasks, professional orientation, many external stakeholders, conflicting environmental demands, and low managerial autonomy. The latter are the opposite. We explore in detail both the relationship between the organizations and their parent ministries and their responses to organizational change. Organizations with a high degree of publicness are subject to a tight ministerial control and have formal and distant relations with the ministry. They also have strong vertical links, externally and internally. High internal control is the joint product of ministerial control and the stress on the public sector value of rule compliance. All organizations ranked high on publicness are reluctant to adopt organizational changes stemming from the 'New Public Management'. Again, organizations with a low degree of publicness are the opposite, keen to adopt new ideas. We show that degree of publicness matters, across both functional types of organizations and policy sectors. Finally, we discuss alternative theoretical explanations of publicness drawn from contingency theory and the new institutionalism.     

ORGANIZING FOR EU IMPLEMENTATION: THE EUROPEANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT MINISTRIES IN ESTONIA,POLAND, AND SLOVENIA

Do different levels of exposure to EU law implementation have consequences for the organization of national ministries? Previous accounts suggest that European integration has little influence on the ‘hardware’ of member state administrations. Data covering the organization of 21 ministries in Estonia, Poland, and Slovenia show the Europeanization effect to be more pronounced than might be expected. Ministries responsible for transposing many EU directives tend to institutionalize centralized oversight in legislative planning, review, and monitoring; ministries with few implementation responsibilities rarely make such adaptations. This effect holds when one controls for the impact of partisan preferences and organizational conventions. The results offer a counterpoint to the studies of old member states that find little EU effect on the organization of domestic ministries.     

How Resistance to Change Affects the Implementation of Accrual Accounting in Italian Public Universities: A Comparative Case Study

Following a highly disordered series of reforms, Italian universities will adopt accrual accounting by the end of 2016. This article studies the case of two universities where the new accounting system was introduced early (2013). The aim is to identify the main drivers of resistance to change and determine the types of organizational behavior that can counter this resistance. The results show a positive correlation between overcoming resistance to change and implementing specific organizational practices that may soften its effect. Surprisingly, the article found that resistance was stronger in the university where the situation was less complex.     

Facing institutional change in Mostar: a litmus test for Bosnia and Herzegovina

The reconstruction of Mostar could have been a symbol of renewed multiethnic coexistence. Instead, it has become a synonym for failed institutions and divisions, mirroring the difficulties of the whole country. While imposition of both the 1996 and 2004 statutes establishing the city’s administrative units was connected with crisis, the city has also faced two major deadlocks, in 2008–2009 and 2012. In the first, a solution was imposed by the international community’s High Representative (HR). But the second remains unresolved, as the HR resists intervening. The aim of the paper is to analyze these impasses – moments when institutional change should have occurred, but for some reason did not. Even the solutions – acts of external imposition – might be treated at best as institutional pseudo-change that shows that imposed institutions have a particular inertia that resists change. The topic will be presented from the perspective of historical institutionalism, with special emphasis on the path-dependency approach, which refers here not only to the formal institutional structure of the city, but also to the decision-making processes in the moments of stalemate.     

Modes of transition and the timing of separatist war onset: a comparative analysis of South Ossetia and Kosovo

This paper compares the escalation of civil war in South Ossetia and Kosovo and shows how different modes of transition deeply influenced the timing and type of conflict in these two cases. It argues that regimes resulting from a transition from above – when the elite in power leads the process of regime change and imposes its political agenda on other social actors – are more likely to ensure political stability in the short term, since governments are more cohesive internally, enjoy the support of the military, and can rely on a loyal bureaucracy. In contrast, regimes that emerge from transitions from below are more likely to experience civil war with an ethnic minority in the short term because of an intrinsic weakness of the elite in power. Under these circumstances, the newcomers need to win the loyalty of the military and of the bureaucracy, and separatist groups can take advantage of the incumbents’ weaknesses and try to build resources to militarily challenge the state.     

The Influence of Resistance to Change on Public-Sector Reform Implementation: The Case of Italian Municipalities’ Internal Control System

The present research tries to contribute to the academic debate on public management reform adoption, focusing on the reasons for the discrepancies between actual and formal changes and using resistance to change as theoretical basis. The study hypothesizes that high levels of individual and organizational resistance to change may be associated to the formal implementation of public management reforms. The research results allow to confirm the hypothesis when large-size municipalities are considered, while when considering medium-size entities a definite evidence of a relation between resistance to change and the formal implementation of the reforms does not emerge.     

Political engagement and participation of Thai citizens: the rural–urban disparity

The nature of citizen participation and engagement in public life in Thailand has changed dramatically over the last decade. This article focuses on explaining the changing pictures of political engagement – political interest, knowledge, and efficacy – among rural and urban Thai citizens since the House of Representatives election in 2001. The major attempt made in this article also to explain how these changes affect patterns of political activism (i.e. in voting, political contacting, and protesting activities), particularly between the rural and urban Thai voters. Relying on three latest survey data taken from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the article suggests that the factors facilitating greater political participation are relatively different between rural and urban residents, and such differences cannot simply be explained as a result of a deeper engagement in the patron–client relationship of the rural than of the urban. Indeed, those differentiations depend on several factors and vary according to different kinds of political activity.     

Performance Contracting as an Instrument for Improving Performance in Government: An Indian Experience

In this article, the effectiveness of the Performance Contracting or the Results Framework Document (RFD) process and its impact on improving Government's performance in the Indian context were analyzed. The results reveal that the RFD process has a significant and positive impact on the performance of ministries in the Government of India. The initiative has helped in an objective assessment of ministries and a focused effort on achieving the organizational targets, and in enabling performance orientation among civil servants. It has also contributed to a refining of the organization's vision and mission and their integration with the organizational objectives. However, the process has been driven by civil servants. The initiative has not been integrated with the budgeting process, and the performance appraisal and performance-based incentive systems. The study has enabled validation of existing frameworks of PMS and incorporating the RFD process in a generic integrated framework of PMS.     

Women’s human rights education trainers in Turkey: situated empowerment for social change

This article presents evidence of the links between human rights education and social change by analyzing the long-term effects on 88 trainers engaged in a non-formal adult training program sponsored by a women’s human rights group in Turkey, Women for Women’s Human Rights – New Ways. In this article, I show the transformative impacts of carrying out human rights education on the trainers themselves: in their identity; knowledge, skills, and attitudes; and behaviors in their family and in the workplace. This article extends the treatment of an emerging question within social change theory – that of the long-term influence on activists brought about by their very engagement in these activities. At the same time, because the activists are trainers associated with a human rights education program that infuses critical pedagogy with a feminist perspective, this qualitative case study provides the opportunity to explore ‘situated empowerment’ on trainers in both their personal and professional domains. The article concludes that further studies of human rights educators engaged as long-term trainers will further enrich the social change literature and the treatment of activists.     

Between a rock and a hard place: Balancing the duties of political responsiveness and legality in the civil service

Civil servants play a key role in upholding the core democratic principles of majority rule and legality in daily government operations. Yet we know little about how civil servants balance these principles in practice—or why. This study asks and answers these questions by qualitatively and quantitatively analyzing Danish civil servants' responses to survey questions on dilemmas that force them to choose between their duty to be responsive to government and their duty to uphold the law. To explain their choices, the analysis draws on rational and sociological institutional theories of bureaucratic behavior. The results suggest that factors related to both rational self-interest and socialization explain that as many as one in four civil servants choose responsiveness over legality. Formal organizational roles also predict their behavior.     

‘We Will Revive’: addiction,spiritual warfare,and recovery in Latin America’s cocaine production zone

Abstract

Once a key site in the War on Drugs against cocaine, the Upper Amazon in northeastern Peru has lately seen an increase in addiction to coca paste, a toxic by-product of the cocaine manufacturing process. Unregulated and coercive Pentecostal ministries, founded and administered by recovered pastors, constitute the main form of addiction treatment in the Upper Amazon today. Based on ethnographic research in nine ministries and using the example of the ministry ‘We Will Revive,’ this article suggests that Pentecostal ministries re-articulate addiction as demonic possession. Accordingly, ministries treat addiction through spiritual warfare against the Devil. In so doing, Pentecostal ministries change the locus of the War on Drugs from trade networks to sinful bodies.     

CHANGING NATIONAL RULES: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM THE NETHERLANDS (1960–2004)

This paper will empirically analyse the evolution of national rule changes for the domain of post‐war Dutch higher education. We focus on rule changes because in the life cycle of rules – births, changes and repeals – change is the most common event. Our theoretical framework is mainly based on the organizational ecology and top management demography literatures. We will be integrating these perspectives, adapting them to our research context. In so doing, we focus on rule density, a minister’s demographic characteristics (such as age and tenure) and cabinet features (for example, power and turnover) as deteminants of rule changes. The empirical results provide significant support for the majority of our theoretical predictions. Overall, the results suggest that the ecological processes are the most robust, followed by the characteristics of ministers and the features of cabinets.     

Funding,Management, and Individual-Level Factors: What Factors Matter in Predicting Perceived Organizational Effectiveness?

Scholars have examined organizational effectiveness in state and federal government agencies to determine which factors matter. Their findings revealed that public organizational effectiveness is affected by environmental, human resource management, organizational, and individual-level factors. However, what is conspicuously absent is the impact funding has on organizational effectiveness. To further previous literature, this article examined agency funding levels as well as management and individual-level factors to determine the relationship these factors had on organizational effectiveness. In doing so, a model was developed to predict perceived organizational effectiveness, and it was tested on 330 United States government workers in the state of New York. The findings from the analysis were clear: perceived organizational effectiveness was impacted by employee perceptions regarding the level of funding the agencies were allocated. Additionally, the level of role ambiguity and employee participation in decision-making as well as employee job performance and public service motivation levels were also found to matter. The implications and limitations of these findings are discussed in the article.     

INNOVATION TYPE AND DIFFUSION: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This paper presents the first empirical test of innovation type and diffusion in local government. Five types of innovations – one product, three process and one ancillary – were tested in a multivariate model that included environmental, organizational and diffusion variables. The research was conducted on 120 upper tier English local authorities using a multiple informant survey instrument. Results indicate that adoption of innovation is both complex and contingent – different factors drive the diffusion of different types of innovation across upper tier English local government. These findings suggest that further research is required on the interactions of types of innovation in public organizations and that policy instruments developed to assist adoption need to be sensitive to variations between innovations.